Against needs

There are no needs. No one needs anything. When people say “need” as an unqualified noun or verb, they express a concept with no philosophical merit, which should be removed from all conversation. (see §2.1)

1. Unqualified needs

The common concept of “need”, when analysed, is that of an objective desire. Again:

• Needs are desires. You want everything you need. (see §2.2)
• Needs are objective. Others can agree on what your needs are, and they depend in no way upon your preferences.

As such, needs are an incoherent concept. All desires only exist in a subject. So, no one should talk about needs.

2. Qualified needs

Qualified needs are a clear concept, and can remain in speech without causing issues.

2.1. Necessary condition — When people say “need” as a verb with qualification, they often express something perfectly clear: a necessary condition of something. As in, you need three sides to have a triangle, you need fuel to make fire, etc. And this sense can sometimes be seen as a noun too, as in, I saw a need for fuel to keep the fire burning.

2.2. Unwanted needs — Saying, “I don’t want this, but I need it”, always refers to the qualified sense; you want it, but as a means, not as an end.

3. Uses of unqualified needs

People talk about unqualified needs for reasons that are rather rhetorical than philosophical.

3.1. Unwanted help —  Sometimes, they want to pretend that they are fulfilling the desires of others while making no attempt at discovering those desires. Since needs are objective, they can be “determined” by the philanthropist and provided without consultation.

3.2. Unquestionable desire — Sometimes, they want to pretend that their own desires are very important. If you don’t just want something, you need it, then that implies some urgency which others can, and should, recognize.

Some of these rhetorical uses are benign, but others are only confusing people, since they rely upon an incoherent concept.

4. Necessities of life

Some people will say that unqualified needs reduce to qualified ones. They will say that what you need is simply what you need in order to go on living, the necessary conditions for staying alive.

4.1. Life — This is already unclear. Living for how long? A person falling from a plane doesn’t need a parachute to live – he only needs it to live into the next day. The concept lacks rigor.

4.2. Conditions — Suppose that we try to apply the concept broadly – something that is not necessarily attempted by its users – and say that an unqualified need is anything without which you cannot live an entire 80-years-long life.

This still cannot be the case, because concrete things are said to be needs. People are said to need food, shelter and clothing; sometimes they need sanitation, education, and healthcare.

The only one of these things that a human being cannot possibly, in any environment, live 80 years without is food. And that is not how the word “need” is even applied to food – people are not said to need an indefinite quantity of nutrients over indefinite spans of time, which can sometimes be dispensed with in dire conditions. People are said to need definite quantities of definite nutrients, which clearly has nothing to do with staying alive. Instead, the user of the concept of unqualified needs decides that his own standard of “health” is what “living” must mean – he inserts his own desires into a supposedly objective picture.

There are no concrete necessities of life. Anyone speaking of those is engaging in one of the sleights of hand from §3.

5. Cause of belief in needs

Belief in unqualified needs is caused by natural desires. (By which I mean, instinctive desires.) Our natural desires, such as hunger and thirst, press upon us very strongly, and the suffering of others who feel those desires also presses upon our compassion. So we mistakenly think that they are objective. But they are not, and we should not mistake them for anything other than they are.

Remember that, although the evolutionary purpose of natural desires is to keep us alive, we know rationally that fulfilling them is not always necessary to go on living, that we can go on suffering from them for a while if we have other priorities.

Remember also that, sometimes, our experience of such natural desires is disordered – some people feel too much hunger, or too little, so that eating according to their hunger would impair their health.

Natural desires are not needs. They are as subjective as all other desires, and they are no such incoherent thing as “necessities of life”. Our experience of them can be aptly described by the incoherent concept of unqualified need, as a poetic turn of phrase, but never as a technical description. No one who wishes to speak with philosophical clarity should ever speak of needs.

Aesthetic opinions

Note: This blog post has been retracted, since I no longer think of it as a good representation of how I think about its topic. I may, or may not, have written a better post about the same topic since; check the full list of posts.

You have no reason to trust my aesthetic opinions. I am not an artist or a critic. Ideally, aesthetics should come from art critics, and art criticism should come from artists, so that you can see at each level that the aesthete has well-formed and universally applicable judgments.

That said, I have opinions anyway. How could I not?

0. Contents

1. Definition of art
1.1. Final cause
1.2. Aesthetic appreciation
2. Definition of aesthetic properties
3. Nature and method of aesthetics
4. Contemporary aesthetic theory
4.1. Beautiful vs. ugly
4.2. Sublime vs. cute
4.3. Based vs. cringe
4.4. Funny vs. sad
4.5. Other terms
5. Notes

1. Definition of art

Art has a general sense in philosophy, which we should not confuse here – “a habit of making [something] with right reason”. Ars est habitus cum recta ratione factivus. It is in this sense that both the liberal arts and the servile arts are arts. This does not matter to aesthetics at all and should be ignored here.

Art, in the usual sense, is a human expression produced through technique for an aesthetic end.[1] Let’s break this down:

• Art must be a human expression. If this expression is an object, an artifact, it is called a “work of art” or “artwork”, but performances such as theatre or singing may be called “art” or “artistic”. Art must be made by humans – nature is not an artwork, strictly speaking, and neither are the productions of computers or of infrahuman animals.
• Art must be produced through technique. Art is not done unintentionally or haphazardly; involuntarily screaming in pain is not art, throwing paint randomly at a wall is not art, and Duchamp’s Fountain is not art either, though his Bicycle Wheel might be.
• Art must be for an aesthetic end. It must exist for the end of aesthetic appreciation. The end is objective; the object’s being ordered to this end does not depend on the author’s intention, although it tends to be caused by it.

This last point is the least clear, of course, but I will explain.

1.1. Final cause

First, note that the aesthetic end need not be the sole, or the primary, end of the object; a chair could be considered a work of art if it were skilfully improved with a view to being very beautiful (or some such quality). But it would not, of course, be primarily a work of art, since the primary purpose of the chair is (usually) for people to sit on it. Those objects that we call artworks, then, tend to be the ones where we judge the aesthetic end to be primary.

When the only purpose of the object is aesthetic appreciation, we have what should be called “pure art”. Advertising may be art, but not pure art, since one of its ends is not aesthetic – selling a product or service, or advancing a cause, etc.

It may be noted that some objects that are only secondarily artistic may be instrumental to the aesthetic appreciation of a pure artwork. For instance, a well-made frame helps you appreciate a painting, and a well-chosen font and typesetting helps you appreciate a book.

It may also be noted that, since producing, reinforcing, or illustrating a belief is not an aesthetic end, sacred art is generally not pure art, and neither are fables or dystopian novels.

1.2. Aesthetic appreciation

Aesthetic appreciation is simply the human perception of what I call aesthetic properties, which I will explain next.

2. Definition of aesthetic properties

An aesthetic property is a propensity in an object to cause a certain kind of subjective experience. (Beauty is the most famous such property.)

As such, they are objective, but different subjects will judge differently about them, since it is difficult, without close analysis, to realize whether an experience was caused in us primarily by an object, or if, instead, the object merely served as an occasion for an experience which we would tend to have because of our subjective peculiarities.

3. Nature and method of aesthetics

Aesthetics is the study of the nature and causes of aesthetic properties, especially those produced by art. The system of aesthetic science will consist of all general propositions that can be found that are universally true of aesthetic properties and their causes, and which, when applied to a particular work of art, must produce objectively correct art criticism.

The method of aesthetics, as of any science, follows from the nature of its object, which I believe is helpfully characterized by this observation: subjective experiences produced by art are produced largely by the sensitive powers. Which is to say, they are composed largely of passions of the soul. The understanding will affect things, but it is secondary.[2]

As such, aesthetic enjoyment is largely a bodily thing. Insofar as we understand which motions in our bodies tend to cause which kinds of subjective experiences, there is room for aesthetics to benefit from massive, ‘empirical’ experimentation.

Since we do not understand these causes all that well, generally the best we can do is for self-aware, attentive critics to examine their minds as they appreciate an artwork and to use their rational powers as best they can to discover the objective causes of their subjective experiences. In layman’s terms, they try to describe what is interesting to them about the art. From such attentive criticism, we may eventually discover the general propositions that are sought by aesthetics.[3]

I am not a critic. There are not any posts on this blog, at this time, that criticize artworks; and there might never really be many of them. So I am not being very helpful by giving my general opinions about these properties by themselves. If my opinions will be useful to anyone, they will probably be useful for persons who already agree with my judgments to, perhaps, find a clearer statement of their beliefs.

4. Contemporary aesthetic theory

I believe aesthetic properties tend to come in opposed pairs. That’s just how it is; we tend to oppose them in conversation, and when we judge that something is both of a pair of opposites, we find this surprising. I will give some of those pairs and discuss them.

4.1. Beautiful vs. ugly

The most famous aesthetic property is beauty. The intrinsic character of the subjective experience of beauty is hard to describe other than merely as something pleasant. By contrast, to experience the ugly is something I can only describe as unpleasant. But this may not be the complete essence of the terms; some things seem to be unpleasant to look at without being ugly, such as bright lights.

Just as pleasure gets mistaken with the good, beauty gets mistaken for a transcendental; people want to say that everything is beautiful. I mean, sure, our planet seen from afar is beautiful, but to say that every single thing is beautiful is to stretch the word. And the word is explicitly stretched by those who call beauty a transcendental – they start with “the beautiful is what pleases upon being seen”, which is fair enough, and then decide that how they are actually “seen” is with “the intellectual sight”, and make the appreciation of beauty into a rational judgment. Well, of course all things please the intellectual sight – all men desire to know, all desires please upon being fulfilled, and “true” is a transcendental. But please don’t try to pass this off as having anything to do with the word “beautiful” as used in art criticism, which is to say, the aesthetic sense of the word.

The cause of beauty is very, very often said to be “proportion”, or something like that. I agree with Edmund Burke that it isn’t. I have no positive general proposition on the cause of beauty to offer, though.

4.2. Sublime vs. cute

The sublime and the beautiful are often distinguished, as they were by Burke and Kant. There is no reason not to! I mean here, then, the standard meaning of the sublime in such aesthetic authors. The subjective experience of the sublime can be described as a feeling of being humbled or terrified; of being small and scared. Things commonly said to be sublime are large waterfalls, powerful animals, etc.

I have nothing to add to the literature on the sublime as such. I just note that it seems to be opposed to the cute, which I think is clearly an aesthetic property in the sense I have it, and as such, a proper object of aesthetics. Cuteness involves thinking of the object as small, and sublimity involves thinking of it as large; cuteness feels safe, and sublimity unsafe. They are opposites; if something is both cute and sublime, it is as surprising as when something is both beautiful and ugly.

The causes of the sublime were well laid out by Burke, and the causes of cuteness have been the subject of recent studies.

4.3. Based vs. cringe

Based and cringe have become popular terms recently, and their definition and import have been discussed. Since based is generally used with approbation, some people have, like in the case of beauty, tried to claim that it is a transcendental. Like in the case of beauty, I believe that this does not accord with usage of the term, and that based and cringe are rather aesthetic properties instead.

I would generally characterize the subjective experience of the based as involving the thought that the object is free; that it is undetermined by anything else. When said of persons, it involves freedom from the passions in particular.

Persons called based are generally those who seem not to let their judgments be influenced by emotional appeals. The based is represented, for instance, by “Chad” caricatures who look, uncaringly, in the face of crying, upset “soyjaks”. This need not mean that based persons are being cruel, but it can; they are “free” in the Stoic sense.

Accordingly, the based is not coextensive with the good. Some persons are based while they do evil acts; for instance, barbarian tribes who sacked villages are often called based.

When abstract beliefs are called based, I believe that this is in a sense derived from the application to humans; it is generally a judgment about the persons who hold the beliefs, and the way in which they came to hold them.

The cringe, accordingly, involves thinking that the object is unfree, that it is highly determined by others, that it is ruled by the senses, tossed about by the waves.

The natural reaction to the cringe is cringing, of course. It is often noted that since the based lacks such an association with a physical reaction, the based and the cringe are not precise opposites. But neither are beautiful and ugly, or cute and sublime; all that makes these aesthetic terms opposite is our surprise in finding both in the same object.

4.4. Funny vs. sad

I believe that, peculiarly, the funny, or humorous, and the sad, or tragic, are caused by precisely the same thing: a perception of metaphysical evil, i.e., privation. This is a slight modification of the incongruity theory of humor, informed by the notion that unintelligibility is the same thing as evil.

This explains why laughing at things is mockery, and why it is considered cruel to joke about tragedies; thinking of things as funny is to notice an imperfection about them, and to point out the humor is to point out the imperfection.

The only difference between something being funny and being sad is whether you feel compassion for the imperfect thing – which may require personifying it, if it is inanimate. Some situations are more prone to cause one reaction rather than the other, but it is always possible for someone to find a joke sad, or a sad scene funny. We are unlikely to find anything to be both things at once, and if we ever do, it is surprising.[4]

4.5. Other terms

Much like based and cringe, the meme terms dank and normie, blessed and cursed, wholesome and edgy, may be accordingly considered proper objects of aesthetics, and opposed in the pairs I just gave. I’m not sure about them, though.

5. Notes

[1] I modified this definition from writer Paulo Cantarelli. Paulo had emphasized that the expression must be intelligible – a crumpled piece of paper does not become an artwork because the “artist” assigned a certain meaning to it in his head. But I believe that this is simply a case of an object having an aesthetic end in the author’s intention that it does not have intrinsically – the author tried to make art and failed. So I took that part out.

I added “human”, to emphasize the fact that I think anything beneath humans is not capable of technique, and because I think that conceiving of nature as an artwork usually just confuses things.

[2] I note here, by the way, that this is the main reason why a large amount of abstract language is thought, by all persons of good taste, to be a vice in artistic writing, whether poetry or prose.

[3] (Note added in 2022-05-04.) Since writing this post, I have learned that the preface of the book The Renaissance, by Walter Pater, has very similar doctrines:

The aesthetic critic, then, regards all the objects with which he has to do, all works of art, and the fairer forms of nature and human life, as powers or forces producing pleasurable sensations, each of a more or less peculiar or unique kind. This influence he feels, and wishes to explain, analysing it and reducing it to its elements. To him, the picture, the landscape, the engaging personality in life or in a book, La Gioconda, the hills of Carrara, Pico of Mirandola, are valuable for their virtues, as we say, in speaking of a herb, a wine, a gem; for the property each has of affecting one with a special, a unique, impression of pleasure. Our education becomes complete in proportion as our susceptibility to these impressions increases in depth and variety. And the function of the aesthetic critic is to distinguish, analyse, and separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a picture, a landscape, a fair personality in life or in a book, produces this special impression of beauty or pleasure, to indicate what the source of that impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced. His end is reached when he has disengaged that virtue, and noted it, as a chemist notes some natural element, for himself and others; and the rule for those who would reach this end is stated with great exactness in the words of a recent critic of Sainte-Beuve:—De se borner a connaitre de pres les belles choses, et a s’en nourrir en exquis amateurs, en humanistes accomplis.

What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects. He will remember always that beauty exists in many forms. To him all periods, types, schools of taste, are in themselves equal. In all ages there have been some excellent workmen, and some excellent work done. The question he asks is always:—In whom did the stir, the genius, the sentiment of the period find itself? where was the receptacle of its refinement, its elevation, its taste? “The ages are all equal,” says William Blake, “but genius is always above its age.” [...]

[4] (Note added in 2022-05-04.) This blog post was originally written in a single day, and partly amended by a footnote the day after. Originally, the material from this section was partly in the “other terms” section and partly in the footnote. In 2022-05-04, I made this its own section, shortening the “other terms” section and removing what used to be the last footnote.

Feminism

I have a pretty ecumenical definition of feminism. So:

Feminism is the belief that, in your current society, women suffer injustice for being women.

Injustice here should be taken in the usual sense. To believe that there is injustice is to believe that it would be good if it were ended. Someone who is strongly feminist will probably take many actions to end the perceived injustice.

This usage is conveniently inclusive of many belief systems. If we include something about equality in the definition, then the conversation becomes about, in what respect should women be held to be equal? What precise meaning of equality should make someone a feminist?

And I think that this is unproductive. In any given society, someone who fits my definition would be called a feminist. Someone who is influenced by the usual definitions might instead say that a figure is (or was) “rather feminist by her society’s standards”, which I think is just a cumbersome attempt to say the word ecumenically when the practice is not sanctioned by dictionaries.

Besides, the emphasis is correctly kept on women’s rights advocacy. I think it is the right standard to say that someone who believes that men and women should have “equal rights”, but believes that they already have “equal rights”, is not a feminist. And someone who believes the former but not the latter thing will certainly fit my ecumenical definition.

The way I put it leads to productive conversations. For instance, I am not a feminist, because I think women suffer no injustice in my society for being women. Someone who wishes to convince me to be a feminist will have to show me in what unjust ways women are treated for being women, which is exactly what the conversation should be about – what is the rule of justice between the sexes? Are we breaking it?

But for the record, I am a feminist with respect to some other societies, such as Saudi Arabia, and likely with respect to my own society in earlier historical times.

Logical ordering of blog

I have divided my blog posts by topic. Since writing this post, I have also figured out the “labels” function in Blogger, and tagged each post with some labels as well. But I will continue to update this page.

Every single post will be listed here. I had thought of adding a short description of each one, or a comment about it, but this would make the list more difficult to browse, so that such comments are more likely to be made as different posts, such as in the “Metaphysical commentaries” post.

I have retracted some posts, since I no longer think of them as a good representation of the way I think about their topic; I may remedy this in the future with a new post. These used to be listed with the others, with “(deprecated)” written after the title – after the W3C standard name for outmoded HTML elements – but as of 2022-06-30, I have put them in their own section, as well as simplified the division of categories; as of 2022-07-12, I have changed the word “deprecated” to the more standard word “retracted” across the entire blog.

1. Introduction to the blog

About this blog

Logical ordering of blog (you are here)

Metaphysical commentaries

2. Philosophy posts

The most systematically important posts have been bolded.

2.1. Protreptics

The use of philosophy

2.2. Logic and method

Exactly five voices

Rules for doing philosophy

Clear speech

Alternatives to reason

On making up principles

Division of forms of writing

Explicit structure

Philosophy and philosophers

2.3. Metaphysics

Fundamental metaphysics

Note on the soul

Hume’s relations

Substance and accident

Principles of nature

Descartes’s confusions

Ontological taxonomy

Controverted Questions

Existence of God

Ceptibilism

2.4. Knowledge and choice

Conditions and causes of thought

Opinion on human affection

The rule of spirit

Types of desires and of objects

On learning

Hume’s required medium

Incorporeal human differences

Sources of beliefs

Analytic and synthetic

Kant on mathematics

Kant vocabulary equivalence project

Judgments

Olavo’s definition of philosophy

Concepts and experience

Answering objections to philosophical behaviorism

2.5. Perception and emotion

The rule of flesh

Sorrow, as such

Against needs

Emotions are not beliefs

Inconsistency in The Last Psychiatrist

2.6. Social relations

Division of human relationships

Incorporeal class differences

Difficulty in defining friendship

Relationships aim at union

Wanting to be loved is irrational

2.7. Ethics

Basic system of ethics

Titles to interest

Virtue

Public excess judgments

Private property

Interpersonal comparisons of utility

Mercy as a virtue

Introduction to natural law ethics

Human nature

Philosophical virtues

Thrasymachism

Sexual morality

Lying

Promises and contracts

Empirical postulates of sexual morality

2.8. Politics

Capitalism

Intellectual property, to Catholics

Property, friendship and hierarchy

Arguments for environmental regulations

Bicodicism

Follow-up on intellectual property, to Catholics

Just price calculation principle

Government-assisted suicide

Housewives

Assumption of infallibility

Punishment

Abortion

Damages

Libertarian political practice

2.9. Aesthetics

Aesthetics

2.10. Natural theology

Paradox of the stone

What is born creates its own use?

Arguments from design

Reason of the World, and New Theodicy

2.11. Supplementary material

Glossary

Kantian terminology

3. Religion and theology posts

The independence of Scripture

Paradoxes drowned

Knowing God Differently Problem

Anarcho-Catholicism

Integralism

Miracles and inspiration

Simony

Genesis as an allegory for philosophy

Catholicism Propounded

How to interpret the Pope

History of Christianity

4. General humanities posts

Active and contemplative, theoretical and practical

Division of the works of Plato

The threefold division

Solon & Philo: Ten ages of man

The wheel of Fortune

Mathetes Bulleted

Bitcoin slang phrases

History of neo-ragecomics

Curiosities of the threefold division

Introduction to Doge memes

From desire to desire

Russell’s philosophic spirit

Character writing

Conspiracy theories

David Hume’s tables

Mental classes

Morality and ethics

Profit of Believing

Bourgeois vanguard

Possible arrangements for a cosmological poem

Influential minority

European marriage pattern causes preliminary research

Impartial journalism

Historical exposition

Poets

Catharsis

Agnes Callard

History of thought

Aspiration summary

Milady Maker Memes Information

Severinus Boethius’s works in English

Appendix on Milady Culture

Olavo de Carvalho in English

Meme explanation: the King Size of Rio de Janeiro

Hedonometry and Mindreading

5. Personal posts

The first rule of conversation

Audiobooks on my phone

The news

Invented vs. discovered

The inverse law of ignorance and contempt

New, retarded systems

Finitude is unbearable

Kindle in bed

Knowledge is lists

Feminism

My meme credentials

On commenting

Stoicism

Hume’s perversions

Uranian Defense

Voting

Theoretical ambitions

Conservative animalism

Reasons and Persons

Great Ventilation and Telephone Riots of SrDt 3454

Thiago V. S. Coelho

Brazilians Use Sunday First

6. Retracted posts

Novel doctrine of lying

The Epicurean personality

Infinitely large objects

Purpose of this blog

Justice

Mercy

Obviousness

Taxation is not theft

The principled curmudgeon

Euthyphro was right

Division of ethical opinions

What good is individuality?

Statement of political opinion

The idea that philosophy cannot be useful

Aesthetic opinions

Sex and gender

Division of forms of writing

Kant’s categories

Virtue

This blog post assumes that you have read my blog post on free will.

0. Contents

1. Virtue is knowledge
1.1. Videtur
1.2. Habit
1.2.1. Rational habit
1.2.2. Sensitive habit
1.3. Virtue
1.3.1. Virtue is knowledge
1.3.2. Vice is ignorance
1.3.3. New description
2. Cardinal virtues
3. Punishment

1. Virtue is knowledge

1.1. Videtur

I used to argue against the proposition that “virtue is knowledge” using this argument:

1. All virtue is habit
2. No habit is knowledge
3. Therefore, no virtue is knowledge

This is clearly valid; the first premise is common doctrine and never disputed. But thinking about the nature of habit, in light of my opinion on free will, has led me to deny the second, in a certain sense.

1.2. Habit

A habit is a permanent quality which disposes a man to perform definite types of human acts with ease, accuracy and consistency.

Now, the only thing which ever causes a man to act is his desire; specifically, it is a desire’s reaching the top of his ordinal value scale. So a habit may be defined generically as a tendency for a desire to reoccur, become foremost, and be acted upon. As such, habits may be divided according to my previous division of desires.

1.2.1. Rational habit

A rational habit, then, is a tendency for a rational desire to reoccur and become foremost, and be acted upon.

For a rational desire to reoccur, the actor must have knowledge of its object, and circumstances must reoccur so that, given his knowledge of circumstances, the actor will once again rationally desire to perform the action which aims at the object; at each reoccurrence, there must also be no disordered sensitive desires intervening.

Since the tendency to rationally desire the action in those circumstances remains regardless of whether the circumstances do in fact periodically reoccur without sensitive interference, it follows that it is sufficient for a rational habit that the actor have knowledge of the desire’s object; everything else merely pertains to the actual reoccurrence of the action. It is clear, then, that all rational habit is knowledge.

1.2.2. Sensitive habit

A sensitive habit, on the other hand, is a tendency for a sensitive desire to reoccur and become foremost, and be acted upon.

For a sensitive desire to reoccur, the actor’s body must have a propensity to desire its object, and circumstances must reoccur so that, given his body’s sensitive awareness of circumstances, the actor will once again sensitively desire to perform the action which aims at the object; at each reoccurrence, there must also be no intervention from the soul to prevent the desire’s becoming foremost.

For there to be no intervention from the soul, one of these things must be true. The desire may (a) remain unexamined in every case; the desire may (b) be examined and found to be in accordance with reason; or the desire may (c) be examined, be found not to be in accordance with reason, and not be brought into accordance with it.

The case (a) may be termed an unexamined sensitive habit. Besides the body’s propensity to desire the object, it requires the willpower’s culpable, reoccurring failure to bring the sensitive desire under rational examination; as such, unexamined sensitive habits are always vicious at least to the extent that they are unexamined.

The case (c) may be termed a known vice. Besides the body’s propensity to desire the object, it requires the willpower’s culpable, reoccurring failure to bring the examined desire into accordance with reason.

The case (b) was skipped because it may be excluded from consideration under this head. If a sensitive desire is brought into examination and found to be in accordance with reason, this means nothing other than that there is already a rational desire which is the true motive of the action. The concomitant sensitive desire may facilitate the knowledge of circumstances which is required for the rational desire, but it does not cause the action. At any rate, if a sensitive habit is concomitant with a rational one in this way, it may be termed a rational sensitive habit.

1.3. Virtue

A virtue is a good habit.

Having divided the kinds of habits metaphysically, we may rehearse some general considerations about their goodness and badness.

• All rational habits are virtues. This is because they are caused by rational knowledge of the good, as has been said.
• All known vices are vices. By definition, they operate strictly against the actor’s rational knowledge of the good.
• All unexamined sensitive habits are vicious to the extent that they are unexamined. They may exclusively inspire the performance of objectively good acts – meaning that, if they were successfully examined, they would become rational sensitive habits – but those acts are always subjectively bad. (Not because the acting subject considers them bad, but because the necessary reason they are bad is wholly intrinsic to the subject.)

1.3.1. Virtue is knowledge

Since all true virtues are rational habits, and all rational habits are virtues, and rational habits are knowledge (cf. §1.2.1), it follows that all virtue is knowledge; but given what was said so far, it does not follow that all vice is ignorance.

It may seem, after all, that known vices are clearly against knowledge – they may be said to always exist in opposition to (and prevalence over) an existing virtue regarding the same object in the same actor, but it may seem absurd to call them a kind of ignorance. At least unexamined sensitive habits are always done in the absence of relevant intellectual knowledge, which is much easier to call ignorance; a known vice seems rather like a disregard for the known truth than like ignorance.

1.3.2. Vice is ignorance

This is true if “knowledge” and “ignorance” are taken in their strict, intellectual sense. But we may use these words of bodily processes, in analogy to the soul; as before we had said that pleasure and pain are the bodily analogues of good and evil.

It may be thought, then, that a body’s having a propensity to desire an object is something analogous to having belief in the object’s goodness; that this propensity, if known to be in accordance with reason, is something analogous to knowledge of the object’s goodness.

If these things are said, then to bring a sensitive desire into accordance with reason may be said, in this analogical sense, to be teaching the body what is good and what is bad. When the willpower brings a sensitive desire into accordance with reason, it changes the strength of the sensitive desire so that it is brought into proper order; if this is done habitually, it can correct an erroneous bodily propensity to desire, either weakening or extinguishing a sensitive habit. The body, having its new inclinations in proper order, may be said analogously to have been brought to knowledge of the habit’s object’s goodness or badness.

Virtue, then, is knowledge – either purely intellectual, or both intellectual and bodily – and all vice is a kind of bodily error – which is to say, both ignorance and wrong belief. To reiterate, these words are said analogously of the body; for the body to be in error is for it to fail to have a correctly ordered propensity (analogous to ignorance), and instead to have a wrongly ordered propensity (analogous to wrong belief).

1.3.3. New description

With all these opinions laid down and kept in view, it is not too poetical to describe virtue, in analogy to human relationships, as the soul’s disposition to command, allied with the body’s disposition to obey. If a habit is rationally determined and the body does not interfere, it is a virtue; if a habit is sensitively determined and the soul does not approve, it is a vice.

The relation of a virtuous soul with the body is unequal; the body is in submission to it, and made to obey the dictates of reason. If the soul could bring all of the body’s desires into habitual accordance with reason, then they could have a virtuous friendship; but given the imperfection inherent to matter, this cannot be done except by the grace of God.

Barring this, friendship between body and soul is friendship between greater and lesser – it occurs only through corruption of the greater. The soul must consent, against its better judgment, to the body’s irrational designs. This is done in many who are carnal in this world.

2. Cardinal virtues

In view of the aspects of right and wrong action, the role of the cardinal virtues in human action may be divided as follows.

The virtue which causes the willpower’s ‘attention’ and ‘diligence’ in examining sensitive desires and bringing them into accordance with reason is called justice, as was said.

The virtue which causes the examination to be done correctly is prudence, which is nothing other than the unimpeded application of the natural operation of reason to the desire. This is the same operation which causes rational desires, and ensures perfect fitness of means to ends.

The virtue which causes sensitive desires to be correctly brought into accordance with reason is called temperance in the case of concupiscible desires and courage (or fortitude) in the case of irascible desires.

3. Punishment

Knowing what was said makes it clearer how punishment may be viewed as reforming a criminal. Since all vice consists in a disordered sensitive habit, which is a bodily evil, it may possibly be corrected by the application of a bodily remedy; a punishment may help weaken a propensity to disordered sensitive desire. In the illustrative terms, it may be possible to hurt or alter a man’s body in such a way as to make it more obedient to his soul.

While I have not changed my opinion about the justice of punishments, this helps make clearer my opinion about the conditions of exercising mercy. Plainly, the “knowledge condition” refers to intellectual knowledge of the disorderedness of the vice, which is a necessary condition of virtue; the “will condition” refers to the likelihood that the sensitive habit has been, or will be, corrected. If both of these conditions are met, we have (what seems to be) a virtuous man; no punishment could be required for his reformation, and any punishment is for the sake of something else.

Punishment cannot truly bend the will; it cannot make a man’s soul more willing to rule his body. It can only make it easier for her to do so, by weakening the body, as was said. So while it is plainly true that coercion can make a man more virtuous, against what liberals tend to think, it is nevertheless only from an animal consideration. It cannot create virtue; it can only weaken vice.

Introduction to Doge memes

Some people do not know the first thing about Doge memes. This is the first thing.

I would rather not explain this stuff because, given my reader base, it will at best just flood the Doge community with cringe leftists. But I have been convinced by a dear friend.

0. Contents

1. Material cause
1.1. Doge
1.2. Other Dog Characters (ODCs)
2. Formal cause
2.1. Character posts
2.2. Caption posts
2.3. Common features
3. Final cause
3.1. Common heritage
3.2. Reddit Doge
3.3. Facebook Doge
4. Efficient cause
4.1. Most Important Doge Page
4.2. Active OC pages
4.3. Pages that post regional content
4.4. Reposter pages
4.5. Inactive, beloved pages
4.6. Left pages
4.7. Doge groups
5. Notes

1. Material cause

1.1. Doge

Doge is based[1] primarily on the photographs of the Japanese, yellow[2] Shiba Inu dog Kabosu taken by her owner, Atsuko Satō, in 2010. This is stuff you can read about on Wikipedia, etc, but it is important, so it should be covered. What follows is the Original Photo of Doge.

Other photos were taken in the same shoot, and are also important. Here they are presented in an assorted collated arrangement.

Kabosu is very cute and lovely and everyone loves her. She is still alive as of this writing – do not believe any dumb rumors.[3] Please follow her official Facebook page and Instagram and Twitter for photos and updates (in Japanese, usually).

1.2. Other Dog Characters (ODCs)

Also common are photos of the dog known as Cheems (short for “cheemsburbger”, i.e., cheeseburger), whose real name is apparently “Ball Ball”, but he is also called simply Ball, or Balltze (after his Instagram name). That dog is an absolute celebrity, and was previously a minor meme called “Yos Doggo” independently of the Doge phenomenon. Many photos of him are often used; I will leave here only the one that, cropped and tinted, became Cheems. For more on Ball see his Instagram as well as his official page (formerly called Nom Nom Nom Club) and the official Yos Doggo page.

Other dogs are sometimes used; foremost, a pit bull called Walter, a German Shepherd named Caesar (a.k.a. “Doge 2”), and a Golden Retriever variously known as “Perro”, “Quieres”, or “eh mole kkkkk”. Doge also has a lot of connection with the fanbases of Big Floppa (a caracal) and Sogga (a serval), which are in turn connected to Bingus (a pink, hairless Sphynx cat). I do not find them worth covering in much depth, but they are all lovely animals.

2. Formal cause

There are two main kinds of Doge memes, which we might call the “character posts” and the “caption posts”. I am going to give an example of each and describe them.

2.1. Character posts

• Made from edits of Doge, or one of the Other Dog Characters, cropped and pasted over bespoke backgrounds in order to tell a short story.
• Relatively more common on Reddit (/r/dogelore); as such, besides commonly having Reddit’s sense of humor (see §3), character posts are more likely to be really tall, like the example, since Reddit allows for this more easily than the Facebook news feed.
• Often has multiple “panels”, and two different characters may speak in the same panel, which is distinguished by text color in this example, but may also be distinguished by text position.
• Main asset source: The Sacred Texts

2.2. Caption posts

source

• Made from uncropped edits of Doge, left in their original backgrounds. In these memes, as in the example, any yellow Shiba Inu may serve the role of Doge, not just Kabosu.
• Relatively more common on Facebook (see §4 for pages); as such, besides commonly having Facebook’s sense of humor (see §3), caption posts are more likely to have a squarish aspect ratio rather than anything really tall.
• Usually a single panel, and the text is read as spoken by the dog, which basically contributes edge and humor to the statement. (Text written on a yellow dog is instantly funny.)
• Main asset sources: edits of Doge can be found here and here, and if you have seen one you like, you can often ask a group for it. Photos of other Shiba Inus can be found in many pet pages

2.3. Common features

source

• Doge memes are made from photos of dogs and edits of them. The variety and ease of editing the photos makes them much more versatile in expression than either Wojak or Pepe, which require new original drawings to be constantly made.
• They are typically made with bold text with a thick border and/or shadow, commonly the classic meme Impact font, but often not. Archivo Black seems to be a common choice, which I believe may be influenced by how it is the first very bold font to appear in an alphabetical listing of free fonts.

3. Final cause

Doge is generally depicted in memes with a certain character; he is less of a blank slate than Wojak, or than Pepe was at its peak. Some traits are common, while others will really mark a meme as being from Reddit or from Facebook.

source

3.1. Common heritage

• Doge is generally presented as male, although Kabosu is female.
• Presenting Doge as hating women and minorities is part of the common heritage, though really de-emphasized by Reddit memes.
• It is also part of the common heritage that he has been in a divorce with some woman named Karen, who took the kids in the divorce. Simple joke memes about Karen have simply gone out of style in both platforms, but she became a specific character in dogelore reddit.

3.2. Reddit Doge

source

• Reddit, fitting to the “dogelore” name, has created a complex system of characters. It is meticulously documented in this wiki.
• Any idea of Doge being in a relationship with Isabelle from the Animal Crossing series is certainly from Reddit.
• Any idea of Doge having a particular family, with named relatives besides his ex-wife Karen, is certainly from Reddit. (This is not the same, of course, as merely using the “child Doge” templates to depict Doge as having children, for instance.)
• Doge is not always shown as bigoted even on Facebook, but any explicit acceptance of minorities will mark a meme as being from Reddit.
• When “Doge 2” came around, hostility to it generally came from Reddit, whereas Facebook pages tended to be more welcoming of it. (It has since simply faded away on both websites.)

3.3. Facebook Doge

source

• Doge’s hatred of women and minorities has been wonderfully kindled and developed by the Facebook environment. Doge memes are frequently (post-ironically) misogynistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic; anything further than the mildest misogyny will certainly mark a meme as being from Facebook.
• Doge having a foot fetish seems to be more of a Facebook thing.
• Doge being wanted for war crimes (typically in the former Yugoslavia countries) is a Facebook thing.
• Doge being Christian is a Facebook thing.
• Dogeposters referring to each other as “kings” is a Facebook meme, though the classic “you dropped your crown” memes must surely have been popular on Reddit too.

4. Efficient cause

Reddit Doge is found entirely in /r/dogelore (maybe /r/dogecoin) and that is all there is to it. But Facebook Doge is found in a cluster of pages and groups, the extent of which is not realized by many people. What follows is a review of major Facebook sources.

4.1. Most Important Doge Page

The most important Doge page is Doge Collection (@DogeCollector). It is the most important page to the Doge community, and the most important to follow if you are getting into Doge. This is for the following reasons:

• It is the largest in absolute numbers, and very influential on the Doge community.
• It is very popular and respected, as well as very productive, so it has given birth to many popular templates.
• The content has basically set and maintained the voice of what Facebook Doge is. It is the perfect mix of right wing extremism, basic fun silliness, and genuine heartfelt appreciation of Kabosu and other Shiba Inus.
• In this last connection, it is worth noting that the admin regularly updates followers on the newest cute photos of celebrity dogs, and has actually been in friendly contact multiple times with Kabosu’s owner as well as Ball Ball’s owner. He had plans to go to Japan and meet Kabosu, although it is unclear how much those have been thrown off by the pandemic.
• A new follower will find that he often shares from other Doge pages, so it is a great page to start from, because you can discover other pages from it.

4.2. Active OC pages

• Cutting Edge Darkcel Quotes Over Stock Doge Images is what it says on the tin. Given the great availability of high-quality “stock Doge images” (premade templates with Doge on them), the content still looks pretty good æsthetically. The text is always great, and is the very archetype of edgy right wing Doge. I believe the admin took most of the phrases from his own Discord server, so they are often real quotes from real edgelords.
• Just some fresh Doge OC for my kings is also what it says on the tin; the content quality is often on par with Doge Collection himself, and his æsthetic is similar. Has a bit more toilet humor than average.
• Owlbear Doge is good and pretty eclectic.
• Doge Dad is a beloved page known for extended, narrative character posts. Not to be confused with Papa Doge, listed below.
• Bishop Dogeberg is the main poster at his own public group, Gospel of Doge. Makes many great character posts; some are explicitly Christian, but not as many of them as the name might have led you to think.
• Creationist Doge is a thematic page, around the theme of Doge being a creationist. Very good and funny.
• Depressed Doge is another one; what it says on the tin.
• Punk Doge is the longest-running thematic Doge page. Posts are Reddit-influenced character posts. Leftist-friendly; no edge.
• Your Friend Doge also makes Reddit-influenced character posts. Also has no edge, it’s really pretty “wholesome”; leftist-friendly.
• Stromk peeple memes is alright.

4.3. Pages that post regional content

Some pages bring their local character (and possibly language) to Doge content.

• Bangladeshi Dogeposting – the owner of this one is pretty explicitly libertarian. Posts are about halfway split between Bengali and English.
• Indoges = Indonesian Doges. Usually posts in the Indonesian language, and infrequently in English.
• Dogearia Dois Irmãos is a great Brazilian Doge page. Always posts in Portuguese and doesn’t seem to like gringos very much.

4.4. Reposter pages

Reposting is not frowned upon in the Doge community, and some pages are explicitly named after the fact that they do it. African Wild Doggo is an exception – being popular early on, he was much hated by the community, because he would put his own watermark on other people’s content.

• Random Stolen Doge Pictures Until I Find Purpose – I think it used to be named “Random Stolen Doge Pictures Until I Get a Girlfriend”, lol
• Doge memes I done stole

4.5. Inactive, beloved pages

• Dogesociative is the most worth mentioning in this connection. He made great-looking caption posts with a David Bowie æsthetic and a depressed, heartbroken vibe. He still shows clear signs of being alive, but has kinda lost the energy that he used to post with.
• Sprite Doge was a fun thematic page. I think the admin is not affiliated with the Sprite brand, he just likes Sprite. Similarly, 7UP Doge.
• I made this page to bully shitty doge pages was very useful to the community early on, when many shitty doge pages were cropping up. The bullying from this page and from independent actors helped keep memes at the right tone. Also had good, eclectic OC.
• Papa Doge has only been inactive for about a month, so he might still come back. A good and beloved page, he is actually a father in real life, and has blogged about his son on the page from time to time. You may remember him from his suicide attempt. Not to be confused with Doge Dad, listed above.
• There was a great page called Doge travels to various album covers; if you see an album cover with Doge edited onto it, that page probably made it. I don’t know what happened to it, but it cannot be found anymore.

4.6. Left pages

Making a left-of-center Doge page is frowned upon, please do not do it. The closest you get are the commie posts in the “doge supply” group, as well as the non-edgy pages listed near the end of §4.2. Political Doge, a liberal page, is generally thought to be cringe and was much bullied during its heyday. The (unofficial) Cheems page is also worth mentioning here because, besides being cringe, it has repeatedly expressed distaste for the usual edgy right-wing Doge memes; most of its content is reposted.

4.7. Doge groups

My doge supply is unlimited, and I have one for every situation is the most important group because it is the largest. Encourages members to dump all of their saved Doge memes upon entry, which was a great tactic. Recently has had some infighting due to a strange influx of communist dogeposters. I tend to refer to it as the “doge supply” group, because its name is so long.

I have no comments about other groups, which can easily be found through the Facebook search function because they all have “Doge” in the name.

5. Notes

[1] Doge is based, simpliciter, but also...

[2] Nowadays, in recent photos, you may find Kabosu to be less yellow than in the Original Photo. This is partly due to the fur on her face becoming whiter with age, but also because the lighting on the Original Photo was really yellowing everything out, including the white part of her fur. With white light, I think it would have looked something more like the following picture (which is this edit, but with more white balance).

[3] Such dumb rumors often exploit a photo of Kabosu when she was sick, and looking a bit ghastly, in order to say that she is going to die soon or something. Dogs don’t live forever, but such posts are misleading; see this linked explanation.

The rule of spirit

Having written its opposite, I write here my blog post on free will. As before, no one should read it.

0. Contents

1. Choice
1.1. Types of desire
1.2. Willpower
2. Sufficient reason
3. Burdened by flesh
4. Control over desire
5. Order

1. Choice

I believe that in human acts, we always do what we most desire to do. (Most, as in, we always have a range of concomitant desires, and we fulfill the foremost.) Plainly, “I did what I did not most want to do” is a description of an accident, not of a choice.

I also believe that we do not, ultimately, choose what it is that we desire (although, see §4).

In light of these facts, I have been asked, whence moral responsibility? Clearly, if we have no control over our desires, and no choice affecting which one will become foremost at any given time, then we never make any choice which affects the actions that we will take, which appears to be Trouble 4 Moral Responsibility.

The answer, in short, is that regardless of whether it really is so troublesome, I do not actually believe that we have no control at all over our desires – I believe that we have some ability to moderate our irrational desires. The same answer in slightly longer form is what follows.

1.1. Types of desire

I believe that desires can be divided into two main kinds – rational desires, caused by the soul, and sensitive desires, caused by the body. (And no more – see §2.)

Rational desires are caused by the operation of reason. Barring some interference with the natural operation of the rational faculty – which can only be caused by the body (see §3) – such desires always follow strictly from the known truth about things; they may be said to be deduced.

The way this works is that goodness, being really identical with being, can be known with as much certainty by reason as anything else. When reason knows an object to be good, the will desires it (with rational desire) in exact proportion to how good it is; nothing else can happen (although, see §5). Regarding those desires, “the will desires of necessity whatever it desires”, which is against what Thomas had said.

Sensitive desires, on the other hand, are caused by the operation of the body’s “power of sensuality”; this is further divided into irascible and concupiscible, but this is not relevant here. What is relevant is that sensitive desires, being caused by a non-rational power, can be either in accordance with reason or against it (cf. §3). We can know whether they are in accordance with reason (i.e., “properly ordered”, “correct”) by examining them with the rational faculty.

1.2. Willpower

Given those desires and their causes, this is what we can choose to do. We can either examine our sensitive desires or not; if upon examination we find them to be incorrect, we can either bring them into accordance with reason (see §4, §5) or not; if we do not do so, then they will be allowed to become our foremost desires for irrational reasons, and we can act upon them. This is always our fault, being a result of choice.

These choices are determined only by how just we are, i.e., how strongly we desire to “avoid evil and do good”. Which is to say, they are free. The power rightly to make these choices may be termed “willpower”, and may be construed as our “attention” and “diligence” in examining our desires and bringing them into accordance with reason. In connection with the latter operation, we may bring up another necessary to it, which is that of deriving the logical consequences of the principles of the natural law in application to each particular case. Defect of willpower is always fully our fault.

2. Sufficient reason

Rational and sensitive desires comprise an exhaustive division of desires. This means that we never desire anything without either a physical cause (sensitive desires) or a logical reason (rational desires), caused by the operation of our minds on our knowledge.

So, I do not believe, as some people think must be admitted to safeguard free will, that any action is ever done for no reason at all, and in that sense “undetermined”. I think that that is pretty much nonsense.

You have always had your body, and you have always had access to the floor. When have you last rolled on the floor? For most people, it has been some weeks, perhaps months – we simply lack any reason to roll on the floor most of the time. Every other action is like this – we never do things for no reason, but only when some reason comes up. How could it be otherwise?

3. Burdened by flesh

The will desires whatever appears to it under the aspect of good, in precise proportion to how good it appears. If, then, we ever desire anything out of proportion to how good it is, this must be because a false appearance has been admitted to be a reality.

There is no way for reason to create a false appearance; its natural operation is to deduce rightly from known premises. So if a false appearance has been admitted into the soul, it must be through the senses, whose natural operation is that of chaotic material causes, prone to lead us to error if we are not diligent.

It is always through defect of the will that we fail to act rightly. But it cannot happen without the senses as a motive. Without the body, we would have no disordered desires, and even the weakest willed man could be a saint.

4. Control over desire

To be clear – for willpower to bring a desire into accordance with reason amounts to making us desire it less. All of our desires are ordinally placed in a “value scale”, from foremost to hindmost, and we always act upon the most wanted one; for a sensitive desire to be disordered, or mistaken, is for it to be quite literally out of order on this scale, and what reason can do, through willpower, is to bring it into rational order, i.e., to lower it in the scale.

Our control over our desires, then, amounts to the fact that, at some given times, there are things which we can choose to desire less than we currently do.

We do not choose which things it is that we rationally desire, since this is a necessary rational deduction. And we do not ultimately choose which things it is that we desire with our senses, since we lack sufficient control over the external world to decide which things will even come before our eyes. (Although, of course, sometimes we know enough to avoid near occasions of sin.)

We do not, then, in any ultimate sense choose what it is that we desire; what we can do is to bring our irrational desires into line. This is what I had meant in §1.

(For now, I have nothing more to say on the idea of “second-order desires” – desires to have other desires – besides what was said in §1.1 of this other post.)

5. Order

Given the opinions above, it can technically be said that having a disordered sensitive desire is the same as having a disordered rational desire. For if a sensitive desire is above its proper place in the scale, and if it sometimes does (as it does) surpass for the time being the place of any rational desires, then those rational desires are, of course, below their proper place.

Here I would note that, yes, sometimes some rational desires are beneath their proper place with respect to some sensitive ones; but every rational desire is always in its proper place in relation to every other rational desire. It is only sensitive desires which can be out of order absolutely, i.e., in relation to every other desire of any kind. So it is more proper to speak of disordered sensitive desires than rational ones.